Up Front with Dale Dudley: Knocked Senseless

What it’s like to lose your ability to smell and taste

By Dale Dudley | Illustration by Jason Raish

Published: May 2, 2016

They say you don’t know what you’ve really got till it’s gone.

I know this because I’m the same guy who broke up with a woman only to be devastated a full three weeks later when I found out she was dating again. When my mom died, I impulsively gave away her troublesome dog to a housekeeper. I missed that pup so badly, months later I tracked it down and got it back. I don’t take loss well, and I am currently in mourning for the loss of my senses of smell and taste.

I get the flu shot every year, but that didn’t stop the uncomfortable plastic strip that was jammed up my nose from coming back positive for type-A influenza. This flu wasn’t a can’t-get-out-of-bed-for-two-weeks kind of flu, it was more like the worst cold ever. I missed four days of work, but I don’t think my temperature ever went above 100. So it’s still a mystery how my sense of smell and taste just disappeared, completely.

I know what you’re thinking: Everyone loses smell and taste with any upper respiratory infection. But this was different. Ten days later, while the last of the snorts, coughs and Mucinex creatures were clearing my lungs and sinuses, there was no hint of an aroma and absolutely zero taste.

I searched the internet for a possible cause and solution. There were a few posts claiming that Tamiflu could be the culprit, but it was mostly anecdotal. The good news was almost everyone who experienced this phenomenon said that everything returned to normal within a month.

And that’s how I found myself having a panic attack a full month later in the bathroom.

I woke up and, as had become habit, I “smelled.” I mean I tried to smell, but there was nothing. I picked up a bar of soap on my way to the shower. I couldn’t smell the Irish Spring. I got into a hot shower and took a huge breath in through my nose to clear whatever was blocking my senses. Still nothing.

Then a sense of panic swept over me. It was very similar to claustrophobia, which I had experienced as a kid when my older brother locked me in a tuba case.

I went back to work and shared the news with my listeners and morning show partners. They were skeptical: “Get the A** Juice!”

Liquid A**, or the A-Juice (as we will call it from this point), was a novelty product sent to us many years ago by some guys selling it online. It was arguably the most horrific smell ever concocted by man. And it lived up to its name. The product eventually made its way to the military to be used in nonlethal weapons during training ops. We would pull it out to test the olfactory courage of an intern or guest. The result was usually physical recoil and retching. I know because I was one of those who would retch instantly. We hadn’t used it in years.

As my producer pulled the package out of the back of the cabinets and unpeeled the layers of protection we had put on it many years ago, my usual trepidation was substituted with optimism. I was hoping the A-Juice would penetrate whatever wall was blocking my senses.

Live on the radio, I brought the open container to my nose and took a whiff big enough to bring a man to his knees. Nothing. Couldn’t smell a thing. Amid the laughs of my cohorts, my producer, testing its potency, brought it within a foot of his nose and then began to retch.

Losing my sense of smell was scary; losing my sense of taste was heartbreaking. My wife would ask me what I wanted for dinner, and I’d mumble back, “What does it matter?” Every meal was just texture—there was nothing at all to taste. Not a hint of garlic. No citrus notes. Not even a breath of rosemary.

My wife caught me standing in front of the refrigerator one day with a spoon. “What are you doing?” she asked. Then, like the cheesiest soap opera actor in America, I turned to her with a spoon full of salsa in my hand and cried, “I am trying to taste something! Anything! Don’t you understand?” Oh, and about the salsa: Even though I couldn’t taste anything, that didn’t prevent me from falling victim to the Scoville scale. The hot peppers didn’t care if I couldn’t taste; they were going to burn me anyway. And burn they did. That’s when I found the butter.

I had read somewhere that butter was the best thing you could eat to calm the heat from peppers. So I put a pat in my mouth to soothe the burn. As it slowly melted in my mouth, I realized that although I couldn’t taste it, I was enjoying something about it.

One afternoon a few days later, my wife remarked, “Do you have any idea why we are going through so much butter?” I sheepishly mumbled “nope.” I was too ashamed to tell her that my loss of taste had turned me into a butter addict.

I made an appointment with an ear, nose and throat doctor but had to soldier on without all my senses until I could be treated. Then one night as I was climbing into the tub, I got a slight aroma of lavender. I grabbed the large container of scented Epsom salts that my wife had put out and breathed in.

LAVENDER! I could barely smell it, but it was there! I was reacting like George Bailey at the end of It’s a Wonderful Life when he finds Zuzu’s petals: “Lavender, sweet lavender!” I screamed.

But as soon as the lavender scent came, it went away again. I slowly gained back about 25 percent of my smell and taste by the time I got to see the physician. It’s hard to explain, but there is no “finish” when I eat something. Like a golf swing that stops just short of the ball, there is no payoff to the food. The doctor wants me to have a CT scan and take a big dose of steroids, but I’m waiting to see where we are in a few weeks.

There were some positives to all this. I have a newfound fondness for a couple of our stinky dogs. My 9-year-old son who refuses to wear socks is now welcome to sit barefoot next to me on the couch. I’m spending much less money on fancy downtown restaurants. Odd thing, though: Our family budget for butter keeps showing up in the red.